Chapter 53

Home was feeling ever more foreign as the weeks passed. Since the release of the Horvallack document, journeys back to my own tree were getting more infrequent. My storage hut was falling into disrepair, and many of the books lining the shelves were beyond salvaging. With sadness, I had to get rid of some of my favourites. They could be used for the campfire that I planned to stick around for.

Maybe soon I could have some more time aside to keep the ragged old thing from crumbling away. Its sorry state was not enough to dampen the warmth that it gave me. A peaceful, secluded zone where I could read up on some important information or get lost in a good piece of fiction.

I pressed a foot to the centre of the floor and it bent downwards. It wouldn't hold my weight much longer. I could ask Father to maintain it while I was in New York. He would always oblige.

I slithered back to the home tree through the myriad of branches just as my parents were sitting down to embrace the warming weather. As the summer months began to approach, the old blankets started to disappear and my people grew more active, more inclined to play games in the trees than collect excessive levels of bark to keep them warm through the bitter winter nights.

In fact, Mother and Father had organised something akin to a picnic on the home tree. One of them must have deliberately taken a bark selection from every species of tree in the area. I wondered just who they were trying to impress…

"Taku is here!" Mother announced when I pulled myself onto the platform.

"Taku is here." Father parroted. He was tending to a second tier platform from beneath, strengthening the foundations.

"Hello," I uttered in return, inspecting the collection of barks and giving Mother a kiss when she pulled herself to her feet. "I see you have some food ready. It looks delicious."

That pleased Mother very much, and she delighted in offering me some of her favourites, which I gladly accepted. I let her fuss over me for a while, and then built up the curiosity to see what Father was up to. Standing beside him, I watched as he threaded fibrous plant material through the gaps in the supporting beams. Coming to the realisation that I had no idea why, I became very self-conscious.

"Taku want to help?" Father offered cheerfully, handing me a strand of material.

"Um… I wouldn't know where to begin." I admitted.

Father chuckled and pointed to the item sat in my hand. "This," Then he moved his pointing finger to the supporting beam closest to the tree trunk. "Go there."

"Seems pretty easy." I said, taking the end of the strand in my fingers and bringing it over to the beam.

Father, meanwhile, walked outwards from the trunk to the end of the platform. He pointed again, this time to the outermost supporting beam of the upper tier. "Then through there."

Complacency was perhaps my biggest flaw. I tried threading the needle through the first support beam gap. I almost turned away when it fell right down to the ground. Father watched on expectantly as I feebly attempted to successfully complete that simple task.

"I'll get it eventually," I commented, still struggling. "It's not something I've really done before."

Father slumped. It told me that he felt responsible for my deficiency in house maintenance. With that in mind, I doubled my efforts and finally managed to thread the first gap and secure it with a tight knot. "There! That's that one done."

"Mago show Taku more," Father suggested. "Taku is slow. Mago will help to make faster!"

I moved onto the next beam and began to fiddle with the loose end of the strand to prepare it. "I would like that. I think I'll have more time to do that soon."

A whack on the platform on the opposite side of the tree announced the arrival of Lenk. Father didn't take any notice, but I had been waiting for him and I was no longer so determined to do the threading. Lenk, who had his own home tree about thirty yards away nowadays, shuffled to Mother's bark collection. She gave him a kiss and offered his favourite bark, which he accepted.

He noticed me. It had been a while since I last saw him, and those occasions had become more and more infrequent. He seemed almost baffled to see me home.

He walked over, his bark sticking out the side of his mouth. We connected headblades, and then he did the same with Father. "Hello, Taku. Hello, father."

"How are you, Lenk?" I asked, making sure that he didn't escape back to Mother's picnic.

He seemed surprised again that I would engage him. It was sad, really, how distant we had always been. He looked so much like me. Same eyes, same shape to the blades on our arms and legs. He even shared my toes. He was, of course, a little fitter than I was, but then he didn't spend most of his time sat behind a desk.

"Lenk find new trees," He reported with little enthusiasm. He pointed northwards, saying "That way."

"That's good," I muttered politely. I wished to speak to him privately, so I had to separate us from Father. "Could you follow me, please, Lenk?"

He was curious but obedient. Once I had his agreement, I asked for Father's permission to leave for a moment and led Lenk a few trees away to where we could talk uninterrupted. We came to rest on two diverging sections of a tree trunk beside an impassable wall of pine needles. Lenk stood uncomfortably on his branch, hand clutching tight to the limb so that his body swayed lightly forward and back. I assumed a sitting position, displaying intent for an in-depth conversation.

"What is here?" Lenk asked. He gazed around awkwardly, eager to get on with his lunch.

"You and I," I replied with a smile. "And the trees. And the leaves."

He didn't understand and he craned his neck to the side impatiently. "Why did Taku bring Lenk?"

"Lenk. Brother, we've always been so distant. We've hardly grown up together and I get the most horrible feeling that you don't like being around me"

Put on the spot, his eyes turned away and he pulled himself closer to the trunk of the tree. "No." was his only reply.

"It's pretty obvious to me," I stated. "And I don't want it to be that way. You are my brother, Lenk. We have our differences, but we have so much more in common."

He placed a hand to the side of his head and groaned. "Taku always so many words!"

"Sorry," I replied whilst inwardly chastising myself. "We are nearly the same, Lenk."

"Taku is different," He said defiantly. "Know better than Lenk."

He began to shuffle away, clambering over to the next branch with heaviness on his shoulders. He hated the situation as much as I did. However, I couldn't let him get away without doing what I had intended to do. I barked to him and it was enough to make him slow down.

"Lenk," I called. "I am going to New York soon."

He turned away again with haste. "Taku have fun."

"I want you to come!"

That was more successful. He stopped his descent from our high elevation and stared back towards me with bemusement. He swung sideways to latch himself between two thick branches, tail dropping lazily beneath. "What Taku say?"

A self-satisfied chuckle left my snout. "I want you to come to New York with me!"

His head was cocked to one side, mouth left slightly ajar as his mind laboured to calculate. The solution to his problem wouldn't come easily.

"Come up here, brother, and I'll explain."

Lenk steadily pulled his way back up, eyes firmly fixated on mine during. When he had returned to his original position, attached to the branch adjacent to mine, I began to deliver my proposal.

"Soon, I will be going to New York, a big Human city," I told. "It's an important visit."

"City…" He hummed. I could already see a smile just itching to plague him. "City is like a big tree?"

"Like lots of big trees." I corrected.

I let him envisage that, studying his facial expressions. He had never seen a big city before, though perhaps he would have been shown pictures by the Human teachers who occasionally ventured into the park. Most likely, he would take my analogy literally, and not introduce great metal cuboids into the imagery.

"City." He repeated to himself.

"There are lots of Humans living in New York. It's amazing. Something so different to Yellowstone. It can be scary, too."

"Not for Lenk," He replied with a proud lift of his neck. "Lenk has seen lots of Humans. Humans not scary."

"Seeing four Humans in a Yellowstone Ranger isn't quite the same."

"Lenk saw five!" He argued, using his fingers to make sure that his number was correct.

"More than five. It will be a lot to take in, which is why I need to make sure that you're willing to come with us."

He stared long and hard, and then moved himself closer to the branch and into a seating position, rather than standing as if ready to bounce into the next tree over. "Taku wants Lenk to come to Human tree?"

Feeling no need to correct him, I replied, "Yes. I want you to talk to the Humans, in my place. I want you to tell them how you feel about the park."

He nodded enthusiastically. "Talking is easy!"

"Good," I grinned. "But, Lenk, if you ever change your mind, you must tell me straight away. Do you promise?"

"Lenk promise!" He exclaimed.

"And you're sure that you want to come?"

"Lenk sure!"

He was beginning to bounce up and down on the branch, causing the leaves to rustle around him. I worried that he had no idea what he was in for and that he'd be in for quite a shock. Toby must have looked at me the exact same way that I was looking at my brother at that moment, back in the days when I would be equally ecstatic to explore a new world.

"Okay, brother. We will leave here after seven moons have passed. We will meet with my Human friends, and they will try to prepare you for what's to come. I think you'll like them."

"Taku has Human friends," He mused. "What are Human friends like, brother Taku?"

"They are nice!" I stated. "They can be a little… oh, how can I say it…? Eccentric. Not like Hork-Bajir."

He didn't know what to think of that.

"You'll find out when you meet them," I said to appease him. "Then, when you've gotten used to them, we'll travel to New York. You'll have to ride on an airplane."

He smiled. "Lenk knows that word!"

"Do you know what it is?"

"No."

I pointed directly upwards at a gap in the canopy. Deep blue sky was visible above us. "The metal birds. Birds that don't flap their wings."

"Airplane? Humans sit on airplane?"

"Yes. That's how they get to places that are far away very fast."

He looked truly concerned, placing a hand beneath his jaw. "Humans will fall off."

"No, they don't sit on the airplane. They go inside of it. It's perfectly safe. Besides, we'll have our own plane. You'll have somewhere to sleep, something to eat. You'll love it!"

I was kidding myself. He was more likely to get motion sickness, but I wasn't going to put him off the idea so early on.

"Lenk would like to go now!" He yipped, cheerfully standing up tall on the most horizontal section of his branch.

"We can't go yet," I replied, trying to cool his enthusiasm. "Tomorrow, you're very welcome to follow me to me office. You can meet Clarissa first."

"Clah-rih-sa." He pronounced with an excruciating drone.

It was a side to my brother that I had rarely seen before, and finally it signalled something between us more than obligatory politeness. I knew his issues. He was the normal brother, whereas I was the seer. His pain was in the understanding that I would be the focus, the one that Mother and Father pined for in the night while I took regular trips into a fascinating foreign world, while he would sit, restricted, in a tree that sang little different to any other. He was not necessary to my plan, but in bringing him, I was giving him that opportunity to also be something different, something out of the ordinary.

He probably knew it. My people had more insight than I ever thought possible when comparing them with the Humans. He knew that he was not the essential piece that nobody else could be. That wasn't what mattered though. The fact that I chose him was everything in the context of our strained relationship.

"Shall we go back to tell Mother and Father?" I suggested, rising to my feet, balancing myself with my tail clung around my standing branch.

He was more than willing. Impatient, even. But before we swung our way back down through the maze of wood, he hesitated. With a genuine look of appreciation, he turned back to me. We both dropped our heads forward to connect head blades.

"Lenk is very sorry," He said as we disengaged. "Lenk is always such bad brother for Taku."

"I take just as much blame, so I'm sorry, too." I admitted.

"Fallana, brother Taku."